In recent years garments with thick foams, rubber and plastic reinforcements, have gone into common use in the field of sports for high energy impact protection. Such sports include: Football, Hockey, Mountain climbing, Rodeo and Bull fighting, La Crosse, Water skiing, Soccer, BMX and other racing sports, Motorcycle riding, Martial Arts, Rugby, Snow boarding, Skate boarding, Paint Ball and other X-Game style sports. Unfortunately, soft body armor, even with these advanced materials, has proven insufficient to appropriately thwart the high energy impacts from, for example, contact impacts and accidents that regularly occur during these sports, sharp thrusting instruments and circular penetrators such as the spikes in winter sports tires, pointed implements like the handle bars of a motorcycle or the horn of a bull. Additionally, armor systems and garments designed to resist penetration, for example, garments for corrections and/or law enforcement personnel and safety garments for various industrial safety applications, provide inadequate protection against sharp objects, cutting tools and circular penetrators.
To address these problems, various garment style materials such as leather and other aramid and polyethylene type materials have been developed. For example, materials used in a jerseys, jackets, vests or other garments designed to shield soft targets or areas of the body from high energy impacts for sports such as football, hockey and bull riding include thick foams and plastics. Such garments, however, are thick and difficult to move around in thereby impeding performance. Coupling rigid plastic plates with these thick foams or plastics has further not alleviated such problems because the materials are thick resulting in a stiff garment which is less flexible and restricts movement of the wearer.
The same problems are encountered in the context of garments for protection against sharp pointed objects and circular penetrators in the correctional/law enforcement setting and/or industrial applications encountering among other things glass, metals, wood knives, saws and other implements and tools that cut or pierce through a whole array of textiles and plastic materials.